Feds arrest 16 in Anonymous hack probe

Federal officials arrested 16 people accused of carrying out computer crimes that damaged or breached protected systems, including a December attack organized by the Anonymous hacker collective on PayPal that caused numerous service disruptions.

Fourteen suspects from 10 states were accused of participating in “Operation Avenge Assange,” which sought to punish the eBay-owned payment service for suspending an account belonging to whistle-blower website WikiLeaks. Using a tool known as the Low Orbit Ion Cannon and distributed by Anonymous members, they allegedly helped to coordinate an attack that bombarded PayPal servers with more traffic than they were designed to handle.

Federal prosecutors announced the arrests of two other people who were charged with computer offenses that may have been related to hacks credited to LulzSec, which many believe to be a splinter group of Anonymous.

Scott Matthew Arciszewski, a 21-year-old student at the University of Central Florida, illegally accessed a website operated by the FBI-affiliated Infragard, a criminal complaint filed last week in Tampa alleged. He then uploaded three files he named “aspydrv.asp;jpg” – and, yes, the indictment includes that semicolon in the filename – which “caused damage to the server by impairing the integrity of the server,” according to FBI Special Agent Adam R. Malone, who prepared the document.

A 16th suspect was accused in a separate complaint filed in federal court in New Jersey of stealing confidential business information stored on AT&T servers and posting it to the internet. Lance Moore, 21, of Las Cruces, New Mexico, allegedly used his position as a customer support contractor for the telecom giant to obtain the data, and then, in April, to post it to Fileape.com, which promises never to store the IP addresses of its users.

In all, FBI agents executed 35 search warrants on Tuesday throughout the US as part of an ongoing investigation into coordinated “cyber attacks” against major companies and organizations. In a press release, prosecutors said Tuesday's arrests coincided with the arrests of one person in the UK's Metropolitan Police Service and four individuals by the Dutch National Police Agency. Those detentions were related to unspecified “cyber crimes.”

To date, more than 75 searches have taken place in the US as part of the investigation. ®